Azure Database for MySQL pricing tiers

02/28/2018

5 minutes to read

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An Azure Database for MySQL server can be created in one of three different pricing tiers - Basic, General Purpose, and Memory Optimized. The pricing tiers are differentiated by the amount of compute in vCores that can be provisioned, memory per vCore, and the storage technology used to store the data. All resources are provisioned at the MySQL server level. A server can have one or many databases.

Basic

General Purpose

Memory Optimized

Compute generation

Gen 4, Gen 5

Gen 4, Gen 5

Gen 5

vCores

1, 2

2, 4, 8, 16, 32

2, 4, 8, 16, 32

Memory per vCore

1x

2x Basic

2x General Purpose

Storage Size

5 GB to 1 TB

5 GB to 1 TB

5 GB to 1 TB

Storage Type

Azure Standard Storage

Azure Premium Storage

Azure Premium Storage

Database backup retention period

7 - 35 days

7 - 35 days

7 - 35 days

The following table can be used as a starting point for choosing a pricing tier:

Pricing tier

Target workloads

Basic

Workloads requiring light compute and I/O performance. Examples include servers used for development or testing, or small-scale infrequently used applications.

General Purpose

Most business workloads requiring balanced compute and memory with scalable I/O throughput. Examples include server for hosting Web and Mobile apps, and other enterprise applications.

After you create a server, the number of vCores can be changed up or down within seconds. You can also independently adjust the amount of storage up and the backup retention period up or down with no application downtime. See the scaling section below for more details.

Depending on the pricing tier, each vCore is provisioned with a specific amount of memory. When you increase or decrease the number of vCores for your server, the memory increases or decreases proportionally. The General Purpose tier provides double the amount of memory per vCore compared to the Basic tier. The Memory Optimized tier provides double the amount of memory compared to the General Purpose tier.

Storage

The storage you provision is the amount of storage capacity available to your Azure Database for MySQL server. The storage is used for the database files, temporary files, transaction logs, and the MySQL server logs. The total amount of storage you provision also defines the I/O capacity available to your server:

Basic

General Purpose

Memory Optimized

Storage Type

Azure Standard Storage

Azure Premium Storage

Azure Premium Storage

Storage Size

5 GB to 1 TB

5 GB to 1 TB

5 GB to 1 TB

Storage increment size

1 GB

1 GB

1 GB

IOPS

Variable

3 IOPS/GBMin 100 IOPS

3 IOPS/GBMin 100 IOPS

Additional storage capacity can be added during and after the creation of the server. The Basic tier does not provide an IOPS guarantee. In the General Purpose and Memory Optimized pricing tiers, the IOPS scale with the provisioned storage size in a 3:1 ratio.

Backup

The service automatically takes backups of your server. The minimum retention period for backups is seven days. You can set a retention period of up to 35 days. The retention can be adjusted at any point during the lifetime of the server. You can choose between locally redundant and geo-redundant backups. Geo-redundant backups are also stored in the geo-paired region of the region your server is created in. This provides a level of protection in the event of a disaster. You also gain the ability to restore your server to any other Azure region in which the service is available with geo-redundant backups. Note that it is not possible to change between the two backup storage options once the server is created.

Scale resources

After creating your server, you can independently change the vCores, amount of storage, and backup retention period. You cannot change the pricing tier or the backup storage type after a server is created. vCores and the backup retention period can be scaled up or down. The storage size can only be increased. Scaling of the resources can be done either through the portal or Azure CLI. An example for scaling using CLI can be found here.

When changing the number of vCores, a copy of the original server is created with the new compute allocation. Once the new server is up and running, connections are switched over to the new server. During the brief moment when the system switches over to the new server, no new connections can be established and all uncommitted transactions are rolled back. This window varies, but in most cases is less than a minute.

Scaling storage and changing the backup retention period are true on-line operations. There is no downtime or impact to your application. As IOPS scale with the size of the provisioned storage, you can increase the IOPS available to your server by scaling up storage.

Pricing

Please review the service pricing page for the most up-to-date pricing information. To see what your desired configuration costs, the Azure portal shows the monthly cost in the Pricing tier tab based on the options you have selected. If you do not have an Azure subscription, you can use the Azure pricing calculator to get an estimated price. Visit the Azure pricing calculator website, then click Add items, expand the Databases category, and choose Azure Database for MySQL to customize the options.